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Kutuzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged over his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low chair, with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms. At the sound of Weyrother's voice, he opened his one eye with an effort. "Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late," said he, and nodding his head he let it droop and again closed his eye.
He wished to explain to Dolgorukov a plan of attack he had himself formed. "Oh, that is all the same," Dolgorukov said quickly, and getting up he spread a map on the table. "All eventualities have been foreseen. If he is standing before Brunn..." And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother's plan of a flanking movement.
When the monotonous sound of Weyrother's voice ceased, Kutuzov opened his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the mill wheel is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if remarking, "So you are still at that silly business!" quickly closed his eye again, and let his head sink still lower.
This move, if successful, would not only win the day, but decide the campaign, by cutting off the French from their supplies coming from the south and driving them into the exhausted lands around Olmütz. Such was Weyrother's scheme, which enchanted the Czar and moved the fears of the veteran Kutusoff: it was expounded to the Russian and Austrian generals after midnight on December the 2nd.
Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother's vanity as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might easily attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of this plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a firm and contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all objections be they what they might.
Exactly opposite Weyrother, with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed upon him and his mustache twisted upwards, sat the ruddy Miloradovich in a military pose, his elbows turned outwards, his hands on his knees, and his shoulders raised. He remained stubbornly silent, gazing at Weyrother's face, and only turned away his eyes when the Austrian chief of staff finished reading.
Now, entering into Weyrother's plan, Prince Andrew considered possible contingencies and formed new projects such as might call for his rapidity of perception and decision. To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of unseen forces could be heard. It was there Prince Andrew thought the fight would concentrate.
This move, if successful, would not only win the day, but decide the campaign, by cutting off the French from their supplies coming from the south and driving them into the exhausted lands around Olmütz. Such was Weyrother's scheme, which enchanted the Czar and moved the fears of the veteran Kutusoff: it was expounded to the Russian and Austrian generals after midnight on December the 2nd.
Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which might have been as good as Weyrother's, but for the disadvantage that Weyrother's had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew began to demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his own plan, Prince Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed absent-mindedly not at the map, but at Prince Andrew's face.
"I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing about with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the dispositions. When Germans start being accurate, there's no end to it!" Boris smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew was alluding to as something generally known. But it was the first time he had heard Weyrother's name, or even the term "dispositions."
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